Hourglass
by Adara-chan67
Summary: Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Sammys of our lives. Oneshot, songfic, Doomed!Sam, Transcendent!Sam, and Dean!Mangst. Read the warnings.


_Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of Supernatural or the Rascal Flatts song "Feels Like Today." I wish I could change this, but I know I can't and I can accept that because I'm a big girl and I know how to deal with these great emotional blows._

_Characters: Sam and Dean Winchester_

_Setting: Post second season, so beware of spoilers, though they are extremely slight_

_Warnings: Today we're running a special. There's a free shot of character death to go along with your light language._

* * *

Hourglass

**I woke up this morning**

**With this feeling inside me that I can't explain,**

**Like a weight that I've carried**

**Been carried away,**

**Away…**

In the end, Sam finds a way.

But then, that much was obvious from the very beginning, because Sam always finds a way.

When he had to find a way to save countless people from evil, he found it.

When he had to get help for Dean after his heart attack, he got it.

When he had to bring Dean back after John, he did it.

So, yeah, in the end, Sam always finds a way.

Except, turns out, when it comes to saving himself.

**But I know something is coming.**

**I don't know what it is,**

**But I know it's amazing.**

**You save me.**

**My time is coming,**

**And I'll find my way out of this longest drought.**

Life goes back to normal with surprising speed after Dean's name is removed from Hell's roster. They muddle their way through the expected chick-flickage, and Dean stumbles and stutters through his thanks, and within a week they've returned to their regularly scheduled program of banter and arguments and monsters.

But then one day about six months afterwards, Sam announces that something new is coming their way—only this time he doesn't know if it's good or bad, and the moment he brings it up Dean feels a sense of foreboding in his stomach.

And it seems that Hell isn't quite through with the Winchesters quite yet, because two weeks after Sam's prediction—just when Dean's almost forgotten about it—he enters their motel room and finds his little brother out cold on the floor.

**It feels like today, I know.**

**It feels like today, I'm sure.**

**It's the one thing that's missin',**

**The one thing I'm wishin',**

**Life's sacred blessin' and then**

**It feels like today.**

**Feels like today.**

The day is a blur after that—a whirl of ambulances and hospital smells and endless _waiting._ Dean circles the waiting room ceaselessly, ambushing doctors and nurses at random intervals, begging shamelessly for news about Sam.

The answer is always the same: more waiting.

And to his own surprise, Dean obeys, though with a few more swear words each time. He paces, and he angsts, and he pictures all the things that could be happening to Sam right now, but most of all, he…waits.

And then the waiting finally ends, and Dean wishes it hadn't, because Sam's doctor is looking tired and grave and sympathetic and he's saying things like, "We've done all we can" and "Nothing more will help."

But all of this pales in comparison to one sentence that sticks in Dean's mind and is repeated over and over by that taunting voice in his head until he wants to scream or cry or kill or do _anything_ that isn't standing there, listening to a doctor tell him this horrible thing.

The sentence is, "I give him a year at most."

**You treat life like a picture,**

**But it's not a moment that's frozen in time.**

**It's not gonna wait**

'**Til you make up your mind at all.**

Dean vows to save Sam just as Sam saved him, such a short time ago. He'll stop at nothing to make this better, though Sam somehow manages to make him swear on their parents' graves not to make another deal—to stick only to relatively less dangerous, less risky, forms of lifesaving.

With a few days of nonstop searching, Dean concludes that Roy le Grange really was the last true faith healer in the U.S. At this point, he leaves the Impala and boards a plane without batting an eye, taking Sam overseas to continue looking.

Dean consults books, sages, shamans, hunters, Ash—anyone or anything that may have some scrap of information to help. Suddenly, no idea is too far-fetched, no thought too ridiculous, and grasping at straws is a perfectly acceptable fallback.

He himself is fairly calm about it all, because hey, turns out he's taken care of worse things than the disease currently eating away at his brother.

Like Sam being dead, for instance. He'd dealt with _that _problem with a fair amount of deftness.

Problem is, that solution isn't an option anymore—not now that he's promised Sam—and even if he hadn't promised, it probably wouldn't work again. And all his other plans seem to be having this unfortunate habit of crashing and burning, and Dean is running out of ideas.

Meanwhile Sam is going through his own version of the stages of grief—only Sam's version skips the denial and the bargaining—he's just angry, and depressed. And it's hard, to watch him rage and mope by turns, and to be unable to give any convincing reassurances.

And Dean can only watch as his brother slips away from him, both figuratively and literally.

XXX

Sam doesn't want to be angry—it hurts Dean, and it saps his energy. But he can't seem to chase the feeling away, can't stop thinking how unfair it is that this should happen_ now_, when he finally has his brother back and they've killed the demon and for once everything should be _fine_.

Sam wants, more than anything, to be _fine._

He wants _help_.

And just like that, it comes.

XXX

Help does not appear in the form of an angel, or his mom, or his dad, or anyone he would have expected.

Help likewise does not appear in his dreams, or his prayers, or a church, or any_where_ he would have expected.

In short, help does not appear in any way he would have expected.

Instead, help appears when he is alone in today's dinghy motel room, while Dean is out getting breakfast, and help appears in the form of Ava.

So, actually, help doesn't even appear as _help_, at first.

Sam is going for the nearest weapon by the time she opens her mouth, and he has a gun on her by the time she speaks.

"Sam, calm down."

There is no trace of the evil that consumed her before her death, but Sam does not allow that to lull him. His finger tightens on the trigger.

"Yeah, sure, I'll calm down once you've changed that whole scene where you killed Andy."

Ava looks sad then. "Yeah, I know. I got a little…crazy at the end there. But believe me, I've paid. Purgatory is _not_ a nice place. And I've apologized to Andy, and he's not mad at me anymore—not that he could be, once he got home. So will you put the gun down before you blow a hole in the wall?"

Sam doesn't so much as twitch, and Ava gives a long-suffering sigh.

"_Men._ Fine, keep it up. But it's completely useless, just so you know." Still looking perfectly unruffled, Ava crosses to Dean's bed and sits, and smiles at him. "Well, Sam, I hear you'll be joining us at home soon."

Sam stares at her blankly, wondering where this "home" is that she keeps talking about, but he isn't going to ask.

"I also hear you're not terribly happy about it."

The words were ripped from him before he could choke them down. "Of _course_ I'm not happy about it!"

"Why not?"

Ava asks the question so matter-of-factly that for a moment Sam can't even speak. Then he asks, "_What?"_

"Why aren't you happy about it?"

"Well….because…because…I'm _dying_!" Sam bursts out, not even noticing that he's lowered the gun, wondering how on Earth he got into this conversation, and if they're even having the same conversation at all.

"So? It's not like you haven't done it before. I mean, I know it wasn't the ideal scenario, but still. You have _experience_ in the matter, at least, and that's more than most of us can say."

Sam stares disbelievingly at her, and she sighs, her voice becoming gentler, understanding.

"Sam, I know you're scared. I imagine everyone is, if they have some warning that it's gonna happen. And I won't tell you not to worry, because you have every right to. But it's a completely natural death, and it was decided that this would happen when the world began, just like with the rest of us. This is the way it's supposed to be."

It's not a comfort, and Sam opens his mouth to tell her this, but she plows on without noticing.

"You can't stop this, Sam, and believe me, you don't want to. Well, not if you've been a good boy, at any rate."

"Can you tell me where I'm going?" Sam asks suddenly, desperately, and then he actually looks around to see who asked the question.

But Ava shakes her head sadly. "Sorry. I don't have that kind of knowledge, and even if I did I'm sure there's some rule against spoiling the surprise. But after getting to know you, I don't have any doubts, and you shouldn't either."

Sam has more questions—a hundred, a thousand, maybe a few million—but then he looks at Ava, really _looks_, and they all die away in his mind.

Because Ava looks _happy_. For the first time since Sam met her, she looks happy. Her eyes shine with it, her words tremble with it, and she radiates a calm, tranquil sort of joy, like she can't find anything wrong with the world and never will again.

She never had that peace in life, and Sam is forced to draw…certain conclusions.

"I can't leave Dean alone."

There it is, his last remaining worry, and if Ava can alleviate it, he'll be quite impressed indeed.

But she just smiles some more at him, and says, "I know. But if you do it right, he'll be okay."

She disappears without elaborating, and Sam is annoyed for a whole second before he realizes that she's left that quiet sense of elation behind.

**So while this storm is breaking,  
While there's light at the end of the tunnel,**

**Keep running towards it,**

**Releasing the pressure that's my heartache.**

**Soon this dam will break.**

Dean finds him sitting with his back against the wall, shaking, unsure whether or not he's been dreaming, and he's there in an instant, pulling Sam to his feet and sitting him down on the bed and proceeding to hover and look concerned. He doesn't ask any questions, probably thinks it's something to do with the illness.

Sam stares at him for a long, long time, mechanically eating the burger that had been shoved into his hand.

And then he begins to talk.

XXX

It makes a weird sort of sense, Dean realizes as he listens to Sam recount his dream or vision or whatever. In their world, nothing can be done normally, not even grieving. In their world, something always gets in the way.

Sam leans he's dying by inches.

Sam gets off-the-wall angry.

Sam goes all silent and depressed on a level that's unusual even for him.

Then Sam is visited by an evil dead woman turned angel, and suddenly he's okay again.

In the world of Winchesters, it's oddly normal, and Dean should probably be comforted by it.

"…And she told me that we couldn't stop it, we shouldn't try, and I shouldn't want it stopped. And I don't, Dean, I really don't. I don't want to stop it, I just—"

"Sam, shut up."

Sam stopped short, and stared in shock and hurt.

"I can't believe you're buying into this crap. You do remember that Ava killed Andy, right? That she was _evil?_"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"No. She was _evil_, and now you're just gonna give up and die on her say-so?"

"I—"

"Well, I say that's bull, and I'm not doing it. You may have decided to go with the emo, pathetic, completely lame and _selfish_ path, but—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. _Selfish?!_ How can you—"

"I brought you back from the dead, man! I was willing to go to _hell_ for you! I'm not sorry for it and I'd do it again, but I just—I can't believe you're so willing to just throw it away."

Sam looks, if possible, even more hurt now. "How can you even _think_ that?"

"How can I not?" Dean explodes, shouting now. "You sit there and you spit out all this crap about not wanting to stop it, about being ready to die, and you tell me with a smile on your face that you're just going to go back to being dead. That you're leaving me again."

He says the last part so quietly that he's not even completely sure he _said_ it, rather than thinking it, but Sam still hears, and fixes him with those eyes of his. Dean positively wilts under his gaze, and his body goes suddenly limp. He drops to the bed next to his brother, and for a moment they are silent.

Then Sam says quietly, "I know you can't possibly understand it, but I don't think we can fight this. It's a natural death and I believe that. I don't want to leave you, that's the last thing I want, but I can't exactly take you with me, can I? I hate the idea, but I also feel…peaceful. I think maybe…I'm happy right now. I haven't felt this way in a really long time, Dean. It's like…a break, you know? Like we're finally getting a well-earned vacation. Yeah, _we_," he repeats at the look on Dean's face.

Dean doesn't press the issue—hell, he's not even sure what the issue _is_ anymore. He feels the world turning upside down and all he can do is cling to Sam's voice and try not to fall through the sky.

"I'm not expecting you to jump on the happy train with me. I know you're never going to accept this. But…please, Dean, I'm begging you here. Don't take this away from me. Please."

Dean can only watch for a moment before he has to look away, because the light in Sam's eyes is just too bright and painful. It's all topsy-turvy, scattered, and it doesn't make much sense, but Sam's voice trembles with the weight of his plea and Dean already knows how this is gonna end.

"Okay."

He doesn't so much say the word as mouth it, but it's enough for Sam, and silence falls once more.

After a few minutes, Sam's arm steals around his shoulders, and Dean doesn't shrug it off.

They sit like that for the rest of the day, and long into the night.

**And it feels like today, I know.**

**It feels like today, I'm sure.**

**It's the one thing that's missin',**

**The one thing you're wishin',**

**Life's sacred blessin' and then**

**It feels like today.**

The first two months are Dean humoring him. Sam can tell that's all it is—Dean has in no way accepted the facts, and he's still looking for a way, only less obtrusively than before. But in a way, that actually makes Sam happier, because even though he always _knew_ Dean cared, it's nice to _see_ it once in a while.

During those two months, Sam wonders if he should call anyone. Sarah, or Derek, or Becky, or Zack, or _someone_. It eats up a lot of his time, the wondering. But finally, he decides he simply can't stand the idea of their horror if he tells them—they would never understand the lightness he feels, the unconcern, the _wonder_.

Sometimes, Sam can't understand it himself, truthfully. He doesn't understand why he isn't angry about this anymore. He feels as if he's been shown something no one else is privy to, something indescribably wonderful, and all he knows is that he wants to see more. And he _will_ see more—all he has to do is die, and lately that seems like the easiest thing in the world.

So Sam decides against telling anyone else, because what if they somehow diminish the feeling, or, unthinkably, take it away entirely? Besides, the most important person in the world already knows, so what does it matter?

Dean tells a couple of people, though. He calls Bobby and Ellen and certain other hunters, and Sam's okay with that because they all rally around him and Dean needs that support right now.

Around the middle of the third month, Dean's reading the newspaper and he comes across an interesting death and reads the article aloud while he shoots furtive looks out of the corner of his eye, and Sam is so happy at this behavior that his heart swells under his ribs and he says they should go check it out.

So, until around the end of month four, they hunt and it's almost like things are back to normal, except Dean won't let him take part in the actual hunts—he's stuck on research detail. Sam doesn't argue, though, because matters like that are insignificant to him now, anyway.

Month five features the hunts stopping as Sam gets weaker every day, and Dean slowly closing himself off, and only then does Sam become truly distressed, because if he lets Dean shut down then that's it—he will follow Sam to the grave. That can't be allowed to happen, but Sam can no sooner stop it than he can hold back the tide.

Soon Sam can feel the elation eroding inside him, and the more desperately he tried to hold onto it the faster it slips away, until it is only a small white light at the end of a very dark tunnel. His sleep becomes fitful, his days depressing, until he feels almost as bad as he did upon finding out about his death sentence.

More than anything, he wants Dean to be okay, wants everything to be all right again, but he realizes now how foolish he's bin. Things never _were_ okay, no matter what they pretended. Well, not for Dean, at least.

Suddenly, Sam's becoming afraid again, and it's a sickness completely different from the one that's actually killing him.

Then, one night, a while after things become desperate, Sam wakes with a start and lays perfectly still, wondering why. He strains his hearing, and finally discovers something wrong. Dean's breathing is fast, erratic, louder than normal even though he's clearly trying to keep it down. Alarmed, Sam sits up and strains his eyes to see through the dark until he can make out his brother sitting with his back against the headboard, hunched over, shoulders shaking.

Silently, Sam slips out of his bed and over to the other. Dean doesn't notice him even as he stands next to the bed, staring unabashedly and in no small amount of awe. He has _never_ seen Dean cry like this, not even when they were the tiniest of children.

After a couple of moments, an idea occurs to him, and it seems so right that he doesn't hesitate for a moment before sliding in next to Dean and putting his arms around him.

He will never know exactly what prompted him to do it, nor will he understand why Dean doesn't even put up a token resistance, but rather leans in close and gives himself up to the tears. Sam will never know how he's helping, what he's _doing_, not if he had a thousand more years to live.

But something passes between the two of them that night, while Sam comforts his older brother in the dark. It's not something that can be put into words, but it's important all the same. It's reasoning, and grieving, and pain, and sadness, and all manner of other things that have been clamoring for expression for months now, bottling up until they can't really do anything _but_ explode.

And the whole time, Ava's words echo in Sam's head—_"If you do it right, he'll be okay"_. He feels like he's sharing the words, and the feelings linked to them, with Dean even though he's not saying a word.

It feels weird, but their lives generally do, so it's okay.

And it's even more okay when Sam wakes up the next morning and Dean's smiling at him from the other bed, and it's a sad smile but it's still _there_.

After that, it's like they've entered another world entirely, like they're living in some surreal sort of place where nothing's like it used to be and all bets are off.

Dean's still snarky and sarcastic toward every other human being on the planet, but he's oddly serious and gentle when he talks to Sam. He doesn't look for hunts anymore, but now he doesn't even seem to _want_ to, and so it doesn't feel wrong like it used to. Instead, he and Sam are together by the hour, drinking and eating and shooting pool and just generally enjoying themselves. The Winchester brothers are closer than ever, and all is right in Sam's world.

And that is how, after a long and rocky road, the Winchesters reach the last stretch of their journey together.

**Feels like, feels like your life changes.**

**Feels like, feels like your life changes.**

John's friend Joshua has a place in the mountains and on his invitation that's where the brothers spend Sam's last weeks.

Joshua has always had money, so the cabin is extremely comfortable. It has several spacious bedrooms—the first thing Dean does is move another bed into Sam's chosen room—and a truly gigantic bathroom. Their shared bedroom, the living room, and the kitchen are actually separated by _walls_, a luxury that the two of them can rarely remember experiencing. They have a large color TV and a fireplace and wooden floors and braided rugs, and they feel like very rich men indeed.

Sam's favorite part is the back porch. It's furnished with chairs and a little table, and it overlooks a little dip in the mountains so that Sam feels like he can see the whole world from where he sits. He loves the house so much that Dean doesn't even complain about driving the rocky dirt roads in his beloved Impala.

They're not the most exciting days of the Winchesters' lives. Mostly they just hang together, watching TV or just sitting in each others' company.

Sam feels as if a blanket of calm has fallen over the whole world, and he's generally quiet inside and out. He's fully aware that his body is weakening, but he'd known that would happen and he doesn't bother Dean with it. He doesn't mind—he doesn't' move around much these days, anyway.

The days start blending together toward the end, and Sam loses track of time. He isn't aware of passing the sixth-month marker, and he doesn't keep track as the weeks slip by. But all the same, he can sense time growing short, and now all he really feels about that is…tired.

Sam doesn't know what the deal is with this sudden sixth sense he seems to have picked up. (It's kind of irritating, actually, but he can't do anything about it and he really doesn't feel up to trying.) But one morning he wakes up in his bed and it's still dark because it's only about four A.M., and he just _knows_.

**It's the one thing that's missin,**

**The one thing you're wishin',**

**Life's sacred blessin' and then**

**It feels like today.**

Dean finds him out on the porch, leaning against the railing, barely ten minutes after he sneaks from the room. Sam expects nothing less, and when Dean says his name, his only reply is, "It's coming."

Only silence comes from Dean, but Sam hears him crossing the porch and then Dean is next to him, leaning on the railing, too.

"How long?"

His voice trembles—he isn't even attempting to hide his emotions anymore—and Sam's answer comes heavier than he'd intended.

"Soon."

And then his legs fold without permission and he slides slowly to the wooden deck, and maybe he would have fallen, except of course Dean is there to catch him.

Chick flick moments have been much easier to get away with of late, so Sam isn't all that surprised when Dean's arms come around him from behind and tighten so that they're sitting here on the porch hugging like idiots—or girls—and neither of them caring overmuch.

Whenever he's envisioned this moment—and he has, a lot—it's been silent, so he's considerably taken aback when Dean's voice rumbles up in his chest.

"Are you scared?"

Sam hesitates for one long moment, then asks quietly, "Are you?"

Dean doesn't answer the question, either, and the expected silence falls.

Until Dean starts talking.

He talks about a lot of things, his words going in and out of focus as Sam's awareness starts misbehaving. He reminisces things Sam thought long forgotten, and he shares things he probably never would have told anyone in any other circumstance. His voice is constantly there, sometimes in actual words, other times present only as a low sort of him, rising and falling like the tide.

That voice has been the thing to lead him through his entire life. For twenty-five years he has followed it through the deepest darkness, the greatest danger.

But now, Dean's voice doesn't lead him. It only nudges him, gently, propelling him ahead onto the only road where his brother can't follow.

XXX

Dean keeps up a constant stream of words, even though he knows Sam's probably too far gone to understand, because it's the only form of comfort he knows for either of them. He talks until he's hoarse, until he's begun repeating things, until he's not sure what he's even saying anymore.

He only stops talking when Sam's breaths become slower, shallower.

And then they stop altogether.

It takes Dean several minutes to comprehend it, to grasp it, but then he does, and the tears come, hard and fast, but silent. He clutches Sam's body to him, his chin resting on top of Sam's head, buried in that ridiculous hair of his, and he stares at the blurred landscape through the tears.

The sun begins to rise, and this sunrise is virtually indistinguishable from the one yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the one that will come tomorrow, too.

The sunrise is the same, the landscape is the same, it's all the same as it was ten minutes ago—but the world is completely different now, the whole thing has rocked on its axis, and nothing can ever be the same.

Dean wonders if Sam can see the sunrise, too.

He hopes so.

**Feels like, feels like your life changes.**

**Feels like, feels like your life changes.**

* * *

_Author's Note: I feel I should apologize. You see, I've never actually, definitively killed Sammy before, and I think I may have botched it. I don't think I'll be trying to do it again—once was definitely enough. But anyways, I'm sorry if this whole thing was just…bad. But it's all written and everything, and so I'm posting it._

_I don't like killing Sammy, though. It's like eating a cake made entirely of frosting—better in theory than in actual execution. _

_And also something I'm not likely to do anymore..._


End file.
